Hi(gh)!

Am 23.01.2013 17:57, schrieb Patrick Elliott:

> Yikes.. Yeah, ok, that is definitely an.. interesting.. compulsion. Kind
> of an extreme version of some people's adventure seeking, which is, at
> least partly, neurological. Kind of makes me wonder if that is the case
> here too, then.

Perhaps things would haved turned out better (or much worse), if back in 
summer of 1986, when I was quarreling with my parents about some usual 
youthful indepedence issue (I just turned 17), I really would have had 
the courage to run away from home, destination Afghanistan (what else?), 
somehow making my way to Peshawar or Quetta, joining up with some band 
of Mujahidin to take part in their jihad against the Soviet Army (like 
Jason Elliot in fact did in his summer holidays just before finishing 
high school - this guy is only four years older than me, I read his 
account of his later journeys in Afghanistan ("An Unexpected Light") in 
the mid-1990s, really stunning!), you know, "seeing the elephant", 
"Stahlgewitter" and all that foolish stuff about coming of age by war... 
but I cooled down after an hour or so and instead set out on a 200-mile 
bicycle trip to Amsterdam, back then still famed as a hippie/alternative 
mecca - from which my parents had to fetch me by car as my bike there 
broke down beyond repair, man, that was humiliating...

See you on my screen!

Yadgar

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